Anat

If the Egyptians took the Israelite's animals to save their economy, where did the Israelites take all those sacrificial animals from - both for the first Passover and all those sacrifices in the desert?

Even if the Israelites were fed by magical means, what about water? How many people (+flocks) can be sustained for any period by the kind of water sources found in Sinai?

Even if 600,000 does not mean 600,000, you have the numbers from the Numbers census, which aren't rounded, thus less 'open to interpretation'.

However lush Sinai was, Canaan was more life-sustaining, and there the typical Israelite village had around 100 inhabitants. But if you are arguing from climate change, you have the wrong period. The late 13 century BCE was a time of failing crops all around the area - Greece, north Mesopotamia. In Har-Karkom Anati found many Chalcolitic to Middle Bronze Age sites, but hardly anything from Late Bronze and just one Iron Age site - looks like the area became *less* sustaining just when your hordes should have been passing through. (Right, that makes the miracle even greater!)

spin

So, when other fudges fail, now we go back and rewrite the text.

When the issues is what remains from camps from thousands of years ago, itr does help for you to keep to the subject. Yes, we are talking about the exodus, but you were trying to dodge the tangible lack of camp refuse of missing dumps, signs of camps, by saying that it was a long time ago and these things don't leave traces, so the Roman camps show that your theory is unfounded.

A few million people cannot just wander, despite the allegations. The logistics involved in dealing with a transient group of a few million would not permit it. Without sufficient water, people perish. By the way where is there such water sources in a drought stricken Negeb?

The text doesn't supply you with support when you don't get forty years of "wandering" but a long hanging in and out of Kadesh Barnea.




Ten you wouldn't be trying to defend the literal correctness of the bible, would you? If it's not a few nillion people, then what if it's not an exodus either, etc.

Then they are well organized and not wandering. The image was to try to show you just how big this group was when compared to the size of the Negeb, so that you would drop the mistaken idea about its vast size.

You might make a better effort than your #92 post, which has no substance, yet you referred to it as indicative of something or other.

There are scholarly analyses [Neumann and Parpola were the writers of one] of a region wide drought from Mesopotamia to Egypt which made the Negeb quite arid. This same drought is probably related to the movement of the Indo-European groups who pushed through the Balkans into Greece, Italy and down the Levantine coast -- this last movement pushed various populations before it and is referred to as the "sea peoples" which included the Philistines. So, no, the Negeb at this time was not more lush but at the beginning of a long drought. You need to go back a few hundred years to a better climate.


spin

xaxxat

If the Sinai was so "lush", why the need for manna for 40 years?

aa5874

Certain places in the world can use some 'manna' right now, in any event it may not be FDA approved, God probably knows that. I guess God can send 'manna' with a disclaimer: 'Not fit for Human consumption', devour at your own risk'.

Can you imagine 'manna' falling in New Orleans after Katrina. What a nightmare.

xaxxat

But what if it was chocolate manna?

The nightmare would be the uneaten manna breeding worms the next day...

bfniii

suggesting possibilities in response to a criticism is not the same as trying to make assumptions from the text. i was illustrating how the text can be interpreted in various ways. therefore, the criticism is not conclusive no matter how penetrating it is.



if they were "spread out" (which you don't bother to define) as you say, that doesn't preclude that they could have happened with supernatural intervention, no matter what the odds are.



i wasn't aware that i made assumptions. i realize that i did present alternatives.



everyone is entitled to their opinion. not everyone agrees though.



they are and i showed how. you first state that no time period is specified. you then state that a plain reading of the text inplies a short time period. those two statements are squarely in conflict with each other. additionally, you define neither "plain reading" nor "short time" in a way that would be accepted universally.



1. you just got through saying no time period is specified. now you are saying it's a justified assumption. which is it?
2. the text implies no time period whatsoever.



it's a possibility



the slaves didn't leave immediately after the livestock were killed. there were still in egypt for an unspecified amount of time.



you asked why i don't believe aliens created the plagues. aliens don't figure into human history with nearly the prominence that the hebrew god does. i'm not saying aliens don't exist. this is taking us off the subject anyway.



now you are mixing two subjects in order to create a strawman. i addressed both points separately.



it is justified to assume that they did for some people because the accounts have not been contradicted (i showed a couple of ways they could have easily been contradicted). the evidence that does exist is enough for some people but not for you. the question is why you need more. if you do need more, how much more? in what form?



is it that way because you merely say it or do you have some responses to them?



i must have missed that. perhaps you could point them out.



in progress. read my other posts.

bfniii

good for it



you didn't address the point. also, why do you always resort to disparaging personal comments? are you insecure?



somehow i doubt the archaeologists of the world are going to stop studying the walls of jericho because people like you think they are understood "well enough", whatever that means.



semantics. play word games with "outside" if you like.



more semantics. btw, how did i misrepresent the data?



is this criticism based on your interpretation of "outside of society"?



noted



it has been stated that the palestinians are less than objective about the site. i don't care one way or the other because there will be further excavations at the site and it is highly likely that there will be new information, contrary to what you think.

bfniii

your point is based on a subject that doesn't belong in this thread?



you mean people might disagree?



because i'm trying my hardest not to get involved in ad hominems and name-dropping like people here do so often. i'm trying to deal with the subject itself.



my intention is not to evangelize, as you seem to be implying. i am not trying to present reasons to believe the bible is true. i am merely responding to criticisms that i think are misrepresentations or presumptions.



i respect your opinion



no specifics?



not exactly. i would say my main point in this thread is that people are making unwarranted presumptions. the issues of jericho's walls or the exodus or the plagues are far from decided, despite what spin thinks. you, however, seem to have taken a reasonable approach. you state that there isn't sufficient evidence to you. to that i would reply why do you need more and what kind would you accept?

spin

I get your point.

After making disparaging personal comments about various archaeologists, are you getting a little sensitive when it points out your lack of preparation for you awant to talk about?

Stop projecting.

A meaningful response from someone who has displayed no notion of what's involved. There are enough walls in Jericho to be studied. Ones from all sorts of levels, just none for the Late Bronze age. Nigro and Marchetti turned up lots of walls themselves. Your I-won't-open-my-eyes approach to the evidence, suits your methodology: briefly opens one eye to check to see if it's gone.

Another case of not knowing the literature on your part. What would it hurt to check out the scholarly literature on the Habiru?? Learning is not a disease. Servants seasonally working the land, ie in the household of some wealthy citizen, are not part of the society. One finds nomadic peoples doing it for example. There were squabbles at Mari because of conflicts between nomads and locals.

The basic idea which is repeated in the literature regarding the Habiru is of marginalization in a society. There are reports of people leaving their land and going out to join the Habiru. The term has many connotations. It is used as disparagement in the Amarna letters.

Just so you know, semantics is an important linguistic topic. When you don't show awareness of the semantic field of a given term, you can interpret the term wrongly. When you are informed you bleed semantics. So, if you get the idea that Habiru refers to people outside society, try and understand it rather than crying foul because your lack of understanding had led you in the wrong direction.

You avoided answering my question: is your EB source the 1911 edition?

We were talking about the archaeologists from Italy who carried out excavations there. Try to stay on the subject.

This is an apologist's favour whine to savour when they don't like the evidence unearthed by archaeology. Your approach has been to refuse to accept the evidence whenever it doesn't suit your religious tendencies.

I am still waiting for you to explain why the archaeological dig was "not", as you claim, "the most objective dig".


spin

aa5874

Bfniii, Exodus 10 v 22-23 says, And Moses strecthed his hand toward heaven and there was a thick darkness in the land of Egypt for three days, they saw not one another, neither rose any man from his place for three days: but all the children of Isreal had light in their dwellings'.

This must have been a record breakng total eclipse of the sun, this is the first 72 hours eclipse. Bfniii, your book makes no sense. The Christian Bible is the most outrageous book I have ever come across. 72 hours of eclipse and still the israelites alone have light, what nonsense!

The Bible appeared to have been written at a time when magicians' tricks were regarded as divine acts of God.